


Written All Over Our Faces

by glassessay



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, is it really angst if the Hunger Games are just Like That, minor mostly one-sided Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 21:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassessay/pseuds/glassessay
Summary: By the time he turns sixteen, Haymitch Abernathy has decided this whole soulmate thing is bullshit. Plenty of people live long, happy lives without ever finding their soulmate, and he's resolved to do just that.Then his name is reaped for the 50th annual Hunger Games. Double the odds—double the shitty bad luck.





	Written All Over Our Faces

 

By the time he turns sixteen, Haymitch Abernathy has decided this whole soulmate thing is bullshit. Plenty of people live long, happy lives without ever finding their soulmate, and he's resolved to do just that.

Then his name is reaped for the 50th annual Hunger Games. Double the odds—double the shitty bad luck.

(It isn't until later, when he's deliberately messing up a room probably worth more than half his fucking district that he sees the tiny, delicate writing spiraling around his navel. _I'm going to bet on him_ it says—Haymitch throws up and it's gone the next morning.)

*

The Capital is… Well, fuck him if he's going to say a single thing nice about this place or the people in it, but even he has to admit it's beautiful. Beautiful the way a poisonous animal is before it kills you.

They are primped and plucked and strapped in to some terrible coal miner’s costume that looks nothing like the people he knows who actually work in the mines. The shirt is gauzy and useless, the pants are far too constricting, and the shoes are shiny, impractical things that would fall apart in a minute. Haymitch probably has it easier than the girls, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still hate this pompous parade with every fiber of his being.

Training, at least, has the promise of being interesting, but Haymitch is more interested in the technology of the room than showing everyone how mediocre he is at using weapons. There’s a testing field where a computer creates glowing projections of enemies that shatter into pieces whenever you hit them. A four girl hurtles a spear through one of the light people’s chest and it actually hits something, hanging there for a moment before the figure disappears and the spear clatters to the ground.

The thought of this impossible technology being used as way to train children to fight when sometimes the water pump in the Seam doesn’t work makes a cold fury wash over him.

He clenches his hands into fist, newly-trimmed nails biting into the flesh of his palms, and tries not to show how angry this makes him. No use in letting the capitals know he hates them—it’s not as if it’ll change anything.

The judges barely even register his presence for his testing. He’s surprised he even scores as high as a nine, when it felt like he was throwing knives in the dark for all they looked at him.

Haymitch is the last to be interviewed, just like he was the last to be reaped, the last to be tested, and he's pissed about it because he's had to wait backstage for too goddamn long when the fucking One tributes were free to go within fifteen minutes. What does the Capital have against chairs, honestly, and he'd just sit on the floor but his neon escort keeps glaring at him whenever he thinks about it and he's just _tired_. Exhausted at the thought of having to go shill for support that probably won't even come.

God, and it's not like he's going to be able to sleep at all tonight.

The sound of laugher reminds him that Maysilee's finishing up soon, and he pushes off the wall he's been leaning against and breathes heavily. He may hate this, but he hates the idea of dying even more—he thinks.

"Fine line, kid," his mentor says, suddenly right next to him.

"What?" Haymich responds.

"Fine line you're walking, kid," she says, turning toward him. "The thing that makes you competitive is that brain of yours, but it's most useful if nobody knows."

"Sure," he says.

"You ready?" she asks him, as the crowd claps for Maysilee one last time.

"Doesn't really matter at this point," he mutters, shoulders tightening.

"Guess not," she says, and he walks out onto the stage.

*

He's back in the Twelve apartment, sitting on the couch, when Maysilee drops next to him. They're mostly just wandering around, trying to distract themselves from what's coming tomorrow, and he realizes he's been staring at the same drapery for multiple minutes.

"Hundred percent as stupid as usual, huh?" she says, arms crossed. "I feel like I should be offended by that." He shrugs in response. Maysilee is nice enough, and his worn envy of merchant kids feels like nothing in the face of the Capital, but he's not really in the mood.

She waits a little for him to respond, and when he doesn't, she sighs and turns to face him.

"You have something on your face," she says, handing him a small mirror. He frowns, takes it from her, and holds it up to his face. Sure enough, there's a handful of words stamped over his cheekbone. "It wasn't there for your interview, so you know."

"Thanks," he says, throat closing.

_Oh wow,_ it says, _his eyes_.

(Ten years later, when he sees a toddler Madge Undersee for the first time, his chest clogs with guilt. Not because he's thinking of Maysilee, though that's what everyone thinks, but because he's _not_ thinking of her, too hung up on another memory.

He wants to throw up when he's picking shards of mirror out of his knuckles that night, but by that point there's nothing in him but liquor. Nothing of substance in him at all.)

The words don't go away that night, and his stylist clucks at him when he says he wants it covered up.

"But it's so sweet! Your soulmate must be rooting for you!"

"I don't think they'll be so admiring when my face is cleaved in two." he spits, and the stylist squawks, finally acquiescing. The cover job won't last that long, especially if it gets wet, but he's probably going to die in a few hours so how much does it really matter, anyway.

Whatever. What's on his face is between him and one other person, and if the Capital wants to know they can read it over his cold, dead body.

Ha.

They send them up like offerings until they’re all standing, countdown in their ears, staring at the cornucopia. Twenty or more tributes will be killed in the first five minutes, all over pile of things they’ll use to try and die more slowly. It would make Haymitch feel a little sick if he hadn’t spent the past week ignoring that feeling, if he hadn’t spent his whole life somehow building up to this moment.

The countdown ends; Haymitch grabs a small bag near his feet and runs for the forest. 

He runs until he can’t hear anyone nearby, then he walks and walks and walks. There has to be an end to the arena somewhere, and the closer he can get to it then the further he can get from everyone else.

Haymitch walks through forest undergrowth, quiet as he can manage, until the sun starts setting behind the trees. He pushes on until he finds a little cluster of trees blocked by a boulder on one side a creek on the other. It’s as good a place as any for him to try and get some sleep—he might not get much, with the adrenaline pumping through him, but he’ll die a lot faster if he isn’t rested enough to think.

There’s a bottle in his bag that hadn’t been very helpful during his walk since it was empty, but he pulls it out now and kneels down by the creek. Nothing seems wrong with it—no weird colors, all the plants nearby are green, and he can’t smell anything, so balances himself to fill up the bottle—and promptly slips.

“Shit!” he swears at the spike of pain. He turns his hand over, seething, to see the wound slashed across it. The rocks must have been sharper than he was expecting—it might prove helpful, but he sure as hell wishes he’d known before trying to balance on one. The cut stretches from the base of his thumb to his pinky, red bleeding sluggishly out of the wound, but he can still just read the elegant _good luck_ spanning across his palm.

He snorts with laughter, just this edge of hysteric, and dunks his hand back in the water.

*

The girl throws her axe into nothing and it flies, spinning end over end, back into her head. His heart is in his throat, his guts spilling out around his wet, bloody hand. There’s a buzzing in his ears, low and high and drowned out by the thumping of his pulse.

Well, he’s won. And at the rate he’s dying, maybe he won’t have to live with himself.

Haymitch spends most of the ride back to the Capital unconscious. When he wakes, he’s in a hospital bed, tender new skin covering his side and his mentor staring at him.

“Congratulations, kid,” she says. He blinks at her for a few seconds, trying to clear his mind.

When he speaks, his tongue feels heavy in his mouth. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah,” she says wryly. “Welcome to the hard part.”

His victory reel includes a lot more clips of other people than he’s used to seeing. Haymitch had spent so much time skirting the edge of the arena that he hadn’t actually fought that many tributes, though still enough that he wants to be sick whenever they play the footage near him. They include the clip from his interview—if he has to hear himself say _a hundred percent as stupid as usual_ one more time he’s going to claw his own tongue out—and, for some reason that he figures out must be _comedic effect_ given how often the audiences laugh at that part, his slipping by the creek.

The first time he watches it, just after starting an interview, he worries that the audience can hear his heart beating loud in his chest as he stares up, frantic at the screen. By some grace of editing, the clip cuts off after he swears and doesn’t show the Thought across his hand.

Haymitch doesn’t want the whole country to see his soulmate’s Thoughts—they’re bullshit, maybe, but they’re the only part of his body that’s _his_ , still, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t want the Capital to take this from him too.

(He should have fucking known that nothing close to good could last, but the ground still drops from under him when he’s halfway to District One and _why is he sad?_ is stamped across his thigh. Just his goddamn luck. His soulmate is an idiot or a child—or _worse_ , a citizen of the Capital.)

*

There are more Thoughts after the first three. They usually only appear after he’s made some Panem-wide news appearance, to raise interest in the Games, relive his victory for the swarming masses, or send another two kids to their deaths. They’re nice, the Thoughts are all so _fucking_ nice that he just wants to slam his head in the door and pass out until he doesn’t have to read them or think about his life anymore. He settles for drinking himself to oblivion instead, and when some Thoughts about how much he drinks and how rough he looks start appearing, he can’t help but be bitterly amused.

Somewhere in the lead-up to the 66th games, the Thoughts start appearing daily, often multiple at a time. They’re also a lot _ruder_ , something Haymitch takes a sick enjoyment in. No longer does he have to deal with admiration for a victor or misguided hero-worship

At least the ones about his looks have taken a decidedly entertaining sexual bent. He considers letting the salacious one that shows up on his neck go uncovered, to have some fun scandalizing the viewing public, but in the end he still puts on some makeup and a high collar. He can spit on the Gamemakers without baring more of himself.

The Thoughts about his eyes never really go away. They’re the same Seam grey eyes everyone from his side of Twelve has, but his soulmate seems to have a sort of fascination with them. He wants to be annoyed about it, but something warm rises in him everything a Thought about eyes appears. It’s a quiet, secret comfort he takes, when everything else around him is falling to shit. Whenever _he_ looks in the mirror he sees death and loss in his eyes—at least someone out there seems to like them.

They unerringly end up on his face, though, which always means someone else is the first to notice. Mags points one out to him right before an event, and Chaff just laughs about a particularly girly one when they’re drinking away their memories.

The escort bitch stops yelling at him mid-argument to gasp about one stamped across his jawline.

“Haymitch—your Thought—”

“Goddamn it,” he snarls, clapping a hand across his cheek and searching for a mirror. “Not fucking again.”

“Again?” Trinket parrots, blue eyes wide and staring.

“Piece of shit nuisance soulmate can’t keep their fucking thoughts to themselves,” he swears, storming out of the room. “Don’t think you’ve won this argument, Trinket!” he yells back at her, ignoring the faint call of his name as he leaves.

*

There’s a party to celebrate the start of the—god, he doesn’t even remember what number this one is—Games, and Haymitch is edging as close to black-out drunk as Trinket will allow him. Not that he sees the point; they’d already lost one tribute in the bloodbath and the second one was edging closer to a pack of Careers every hour. Why put on an act when they’re already out of people to protect?

Effie just levels him with her usual disappointed glare when he brings it up. He goes to find Chaff instead—at least he won’t spend the night getting increasingly upset with Haymitch.

“She pissed at you?”

“When is she not?”

“She’s fiery, I’ll give her that.”

“Hit on your own escort, Chaff,” he reprimands without bite.

“Mine keep leaving. Trinket’s been around for years.”

Haymitch grins wanly. “The trick is to keep losing and they’ll never promote your escort.”

That Twelve tributes ever came close to winning was a sign that Effie was better at her job than anyone had a right to be, even if Haymitch was loathe to admit it. Certainly no other escort would have put up with him for multiple years, let alone the number they’d been together. Maybe that was why the Gamemakers kept her on the losing side.

“Ah, shit.” Chaff grimaces, wry grin gone. He turns Haymitch toward the wall with a shove to his shoulder. “Thought on your face.”

“What?” Haymitch asks, then grabs a nearby table knife and squints at his reflection. There’s a blue smudge above his left eyebrow. “Fucking—What does it say?”

Chaff makes a face like he doesn’t want to answer. He does anyway, because Chaff’s never been one for bullshit. “ _For next year’s_.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Haymtich hisses, ducking his head. “Flag down Effie, will you, and tell her to meet me in the hall. She’ll have something in that bag to cover this.”

Haymitch leaves the heaving mass of people and finds an empty alcove in the brightly-lit hall. Soon enough, Effie is tapping down the corridor, face annoyed. Haymitch sticks an arm out and pulls her to him.

“Haymitch,” she says, pushing away from where she’d run into his chest. “What is it now, I was—” He sees the moment she notices the words above his brow, her face going pale even under all her makeup.

“Got something to cover this?” he asks gruffly, not bothering to point it out.

“I—” She pulls her eyes away from where she’s staring at him, grabbing for the little bag tied around her wrist. “Yes.” She pulls at a tube of something and starts smearing it on his face. There’s a pause while she works, and then: “You don’t have to hide them, you know.” It’s said soft enough that he only hears it because they’re practically breathing each other’s air. “Why do you?”

He scoffs. “Yeah, I’ll just let Snow and his cronies know my—soulmate, or whatever’s every fucking thought. That won’t bite me in the ass.” Effie’s face goes pinched and Haymitch sighs. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Trinket.”

“Right. Of course.” She sounds dejected.

“Sweetheart, you don’t actually believe in all that shit, do you?” Her lack of response is telling. “There’s no true love in this world, especially not for me and whoever’s thinking this shit.”

She steps back and tucks the tube of makeup away. “I’m sure you’re right,” she says, then heads back toward the party. The space she vacates is newly cold beside him, and he feels a bizarre urge to grab her hand and reels her back to—

He shakes his head roughly. He’s in his thirties, not some fifteen-year-old desperate for a girl’s attention. And even if he was, there’s nothing good in dragging Effie into his bullshit. She’s got a soulmate out there, surely, and despite what she’d said Effie’s definitely the type to believe in happily ever after. He’s not going to lower himself to begging for her notice, not when it’d be second-choice and second-thought.

Fuck, he needs a drink.

*

It’s the 74th Hunger Games, and Katniss Everdeen volunteers.

He’s seen her sister maybe three times, but even he knows that little Primrose Everdeen wouldn’t last a heartbeat in the bloodbath. He tries very hard not to feel anything when Katniss volunteers—not relief, not guilt, not surprise or interest. But the girl sure as hell makes that plan hard to stick to.

That the hellion wants to survive is nothing new, not even for hopeless Twelve tributes—that he almost starts to believe she _can_ is another thing entirely.

He’ll let himself feel guilty about believing her over Peeta when the boy dies. If he wastes too much time on it now, then they’ll both die, and he’ll feel even worse. Effie’s rooting for Peeta, anyway, so at least the boy’s not alone, even if he’s a goner.

(Eventually he’ll learn to stop making stupid assumptions, but damn it if this is the first time he’s been happy to be proven wrong.)

The boy corners Haymitch after Games training one day, face tight. Haymitch raises an eyebrow at him, waiting for an explanation. “I want Katniss to win,” he says, dooming himself.

Haymitch sighs. “This is where I’m supposed to tell you not to give up on your own chances.”

“We both know you’d be lying.”

He’s got to give the kid that. “So what, you going to protect her from getting stabbed?”

“She’s much better at that stuff than I am“—at least the kid is self-aware—“but she doesn’t—the Gamemakers decide who wins the games, right, or at least who loses. Even I can see that. And they don’t like Katniss. They don’t think she’s interesting.” Peeta obviously views this as a terrible judgment. “She was interesting when she volunteered but since then…”

“She’s been stony-face and silent,” Haymitch agrees. “Boring.”

“Yes. So you need a good story to sell her to the Capital, and I think I have one. Plus it kind of covers me as well, so.” Haymitch waits, weirdly patient, for the kid to make his point. “Sell them a love story.”

It’s not the worst idea—tragically separated lovers has been fairly successful before, but it was always a little tricky to pull when the audience only really cared about one person involved. To tell a love story between _two tributes_ , so there was twice the chance that a Capital citizen would empathize with one of them, and like for one would increase like for the other, that might be something.

“We’d have to play the soulmate angle,” he starts musing. “Girl’s covered in Thoughts, I’ll ask Cinna to put her in something that shows them off and we’ll hope the person thinking them is cooperative.” He looks at Peeta. “I don’t suppose you have any convenient Thoughts we can pretend are from her?”

The boy looks pale. “No.”

Ah, shit. Unlucky kid, but that’d been obvious since Trinket pulled his name out of a hundred. Haymitch coughs. “Well, we’ll see about faking one. You think you can play lovestruck, kid?”

Peeta grins hollowly. “Yeah.”

Haymitch isn’t even going to touch that.

It’s still a long shot, but it’s a good plan, the star-crossed lovers from District Twelve. For the first Games in a while, he almost lets himself hope. Katniss knows how to play the Hunger Games, but Peeta has a knack for the subtle political maneuvering that means the Gamemakers will allow you to win. It certainly simplifies Haymitch’s job that they’re both trying to keep the same person alive.

The girl throws a fit when she finds out, because of course she does. Effie is ecstatic over the whole thing, though Haymitch accidentally runs into her talking to the boy far more quietly and sedately than he would’ve expected.

Then life is a rush of cajoling sponsors and watching the kids crawl through. Katniss is with the girl from Eleven, which means he gets to spend a lot more time with Chaff than usual. Peeta is with the career group, which might last for a few more days, but most of the sponsors he talks to want to see them together, not branching off with different possible enemies.

At least Katniss is doing something to show the Thoughts that pattern her arms and shoulders and Peeta has the sense to keep his bare skin as covered as possible.

That’s less an immediate concern when he’s lying near-dead in a river and Katniss doesn’t even know to look for him.

Then the little girl—Rue, her name was Rue and she whistled just like Chaff—dies, and the Gamemakers announce that a couple from the same district can win together. Katniss trades one tribute for another and Haymitch isn’t sure that her grief lets her tell them apart.

It’s good for ratings, the little simulation of domesticity they’re acting out in the cave. Katniss feeds them, Peeta tells stories that make her seem far nicer than is truth, and they play at love for a nation that wants to believe in it. It’s enough that he can scrounge up the exorbitant fees needed to send a little gift, the meaning of which Katniss, at least, seems to pick up on.

He can’t hope to send them the medicine for Peeta’s leg. Even if the boy is willing to die for Katniss, that’s a terrible way to go, so he puts on his best smile and goes to Crane. He makes all kinds of arguments that have him feeling hollow—that death by fever isn’t exciting, that Katniss won’t leave the cave if Peeta can’t, that they’ll only go against the other tributes if the boy can walk—and buys them a chance.

The banquet is mostly a ploy to drag the remaining tributes together, but it’s a chance to help Peeta, if Katniss can manage it.

Haymitch and Chaff sit in silence when Thresh kills the Two girl instead of Katniss and loses his life because of it. “She’s going to win,” Chaff says as the canon for his last tribute sounds.

“She has to.”

Chaff just looks at him, long and knowing. “They’re going to want to see her kill your boy.”

“I know,” he says as the screen shows Katniss returning to Peeta’s side. “I know.”

Chaff leaves, and Haymitch spends a long hour watching the Two boy grieve as his kids reunite. He hasn’t move from his seat on the couch by the time Effie steps out the elevator and pads quietly over to sit next to him. On screen is recap footage of Peeta sleeping with his head in Katniss’ lap, her eyes trained just left of the camera.

“Do you think she could have loved him?” Effie asks, out of nowhere.

Haymitch turns his head to stare at her. “What?”

Effie bites her lip, gazing up at their kids. She shakes her head, voice quiet. “Never mind.”

“As long as she can fake it, I don’t really care,” he says, because survival is more important than that.

“Yes, of course.” Her voice and smile are faint. This is not an Effie he’s used to, not that anything about these Games is normal. “Still, it would have been nice.”

He huffs. “Nice for her to outlive someone she cares about?”

“Nice for him to have believed it,” she says, then stands and walks out of the room.

Peeta’s leg heals enough that they can finish it, and they crawl back toward the cornucopia where it began. Mutated dogs kill Cato, and it’s just Katniss and Peeta and a handful of berries to call a government’s bluff.

It works. And they win. Both of them.

He doesn’t want to think about how they’ll pay for this.

Haymitch is there when Katniss wakes up, gives her the same message his mentor gave him, and he’s not sure if it’s worse to have the realization that the Games are never over or to force someone else to. He’s not there when Peeta wakes up, but he visits him once he has. The kid’s leg had been a real bitch to heal, not quite fixable even with Capital medicine, so Haymitch expects that to be the only thing Peeta’s really invested in. Instead, he’s frowning down at his bare arms.

Haymitch slumps down into the chair beside him, silent.

“They’re mine,” Peeta says.

“Your arms? Uh, yeah—”

“Katniss’ Thoughts.” He leans his head back into the pillows, closing his eyes. “The Thoughts on Katniss. They’re mine, they’ve been mine since we were kids.” Well. It’s not like Haymitch hadn’t suspected, but it’s different to know for sure. “I thought—I thought that after… everything, that maybe I would have hers too.” He nods at the unblemished skin of his hands and arms, smiling small and broken. “Guess not.”

Haymitch says nothing.

“It’s not her fault, that she’s not supposed to want me. But it still—” he swallows his words, turns to Haymitch, gaze intense. Peeta opens his mouth as if to say something, but closes it and looks back at his hand. “I don’t know if it would be worse, if she had chosen not to.”

There are a lot of things, Haymitch thinks, that could be worse.

*

Poor kids had no idea what they were getting into, winning the Games.

But then, neither did he.

Usually he’s allowed to slink back to Twelve and ignore the rest of the world as soon as the games are over. This year he has to spend months touring around the districts, spreading peace and love for the Capital, and he even has to pretend to like it or this whole charade will fall down on all of them.

At least Trinket isn’t enjoying herself nearly as much as he thought she would.

“Can’t you at least _pretend_ to be in love?” she snaps at Katniss after a slightly disastrous event in One.

“I don’t see why we have to pretend to be soulmates!” Katniss bites, fuming. Haymitch carefully avoids looking at Peeta, instead bouncing back and forth between the two furious women.

“You have to be soulmates because the country thinks it’s romantic!” Effie yells, then pinches her nose and tries to compose herself. When she speaks again her volume is lower, though her tone is just as cutting. “Even if they’re wrong, it’s still an opportunity to endear you to them that _we can’t pass up_.”

“Thought you’d love that soulmate shit, sweetheart,” Haymitch interjects.

She frowns, tiny lines he’d usually mock her about creasing between her brows. “My soulmate is a bastard and a drunk and never wanted one. It’s a lot less romantic when it doesn’t work out.”

“Effie—” the boy starts, face concerned, but she waves him off.

“Enough,” she says then points at Katniss. “Be in love or be an example.”

It’s the closest Effie’s ever gotten to hinting she knows the extent of the danger they’re barely skirting, and it leaves him and Katniss staring stupidly at each other as Effie sweeps out of the room.

Peeta stands and sighs, arms crossed over his stomach and avoiding the girl’s gaze. “You’ve done more difficult things,” he murmurs, then follows Effie’s wake.

Katniss scowls into thin air, then turns to Haymitch. He shrugs, still reeling.

The next District stops go over better, and though Haymitch can see the anger carefully contained within the kids, Effie’s improved mood leads him to hope that maybe no one else can. It’s their best chance, really, that the people look at these kids and love them more than they’re afraid.

The whole country must be thinking about Peeta Mellark, but Haymitch can’t spot a single Thought on him. Katniss is covered in Peeta’s Thoughts, enough that Haymitch would joke about how the boy never thinks of anything else, but his skin is still blank. Maybe they’re just showing up in places his clothing covers—hopefully the watching public believes that’s the case. Haymitch knows better.

Both of them have shit luck, if Peeta’s earlier assessment of what they mean to each other is right. Then again, they were the only pair to survive a Hunger Games in the history of Panem, so. Maybe all luck is shit.

Then President Snow announces the rules of the 75th games, and Haymitch has to accept that it’s not luck that’s the problem.

He gets spectacularly, smashingly drunk, and wakes up in his living room surrounded by empty bottles and destroyed cushions, with _NO_ written in big blue letters across his chest.

Yeah, he can fucking empathize.

*

The kids go back to the Games.

So do Mags and Finnick and Chaff and Beetee and Wiress and Johanna and half the fucking people he might have considered his friends. And he’s here, trying to break them out.

He barely has time to sleep, with all the planning and meeting and still keeping up with the Games. The dark shadows under his eyes grow darker. Effie must sense something’s off, even though she can’t know the truth, because every time he catches her alone she’s a flurry of anxiety—until she notices him there, and she becomes a solemn, sympathetic statue. She just looks at him, big blue eyes filled with the same sad sympathy he’d hated a decade ago and can’t bring himself to hate now. He worries she knows, he worries she’ll never know—he worries she’ll snitch on him to her bosses and that she’ll be left behind by the rebellion and hurt for the sympathy she feels.

He just _worries_ , over everything, he can’t seem to stop. He’s never been a worrier, before.

The day before the breakout is expected, Haymitch spends the night watching the Games and waiting.

The actual event won’t be broadcast, the Gamemakers would rather cut the feed than show the arena breakdown around them—and Haymitch should be well out of the Capital by the time it happens, if he doesn’t want to be executed—but there’s something about watching the group set up for the night that lets him pretend they aren’t all about to risk their lives. And the lives of everyone they care about.

Effie is lounging silently next to him. Usually she’d still be in escort-perfect condition, but for some reason she’s in flowing night clothes and has taken her makeup off. He assumes she looks like this at the end of every night, but she’s never come back out into the shared space before, and for once Haymitch can actually see the pale peach of her skin and the tiny freckles over her nose.

The knowledge hits him like a boot to the gut. He’s known her for nine years, spent more time alone with her than anyone else since his family, and he had no idea she had freckles. Hadn’t even thought to wonder it.

He’d known she was pretty, by Capital standards, but even with all that shit on caked on her face, there’d always been something about her that kept her from being a pain to look at. He realizes now that she’s just genuinely _beautiful_ , and not even the artifice and horrors of Capital fashion could stop that from shining through.

Her eyes are still the vivid blue-violet he’s seen every year, and that, somehow, is what grounds him. She’s still Effie, the same Effie, she’s just an Effie without makeup and with freckles on her face.

Not just the freckles, though—there’s something small and grey curling over her cheekbone and nose.

“Effie,” he says, sitting up to squint at her. “There’ something on your—” he gestures at his own face.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, Haymitch, some of us have freckles, sorry to shatter the illusion.”

“Not what I meant,” he says, with far less bite than he should have used. She frowns at him, produces a mirror from somewhere, and looks at it.

Her eyes go wide, her face pales, and her gaze flickers to him, panicked. She stands in a flurry of motion, then scurries to the elevator, making twittering noises about having to go. It’s not until the doors close that Haymitch realizes it was a Thought, one that read _she has freckles_ —

And that he was the one thinking it.

(The escape to Thirteen is scheduled for midnight and, after an hour of fruitless searching, Haymitch leaves, _he knows, he knows, he knows_ splattered across his hands and ribs and throat.)

*

He knows she’s alive—everyone knows she’s alive—because of the jagged blue Thoughts that cover his neck, his cheek, his arms, and probably the bottoms of his fucking feet. They show up in sudden, violent clusters, fading until he can just barely read them right as another cluster appears.

They’re cries for help, usually, _please_ and _save me_ and _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Haymitch, I’m sorry_.

He nearly claws his own skin off when he finds _I miss you_ in the hollow of his elbow.

So many people in Thirteen look at him with pity that he almost starts to prefer Coin’s false sympathy. Katniss doesn’t even seem to register his recurring episodes of bruise-blue words, too lost in her own ghosts, and he prefers it that way. The girl has enough shit to worry about, no need to have her try and shoulder this too.

The first time he wakes up with blue letters stamped across places he can’t hide them, Plutarch flinches to look him in the face. It’s the most remorse he’s ever seen on the other man, at least the most that Haymitch actually believes is real, so he nearly misses it when Plutarch says: “I thought she would be safe.”

“ _What?_ ”

“She was an escort, and a popular one at that. I thought she’d be safer in the Capital than out here.” He smiles ruefully. “I suppose I thought wrong.”

“You _knew?_ ”

Plutarch draws up short, staring at him. His eyes flicker back and forth over Haymitch’s face, and if it were any other situation he might take some pleasure in finally surprising the other man. “She told me,” he finally says. “Years ago.”

_Years_. Effie had known for _years_ and hadn’t told him.

He fumes about it for nearly a week until _please be safe_ spirals around his left knee and he is suddenly exhausted. She’s not even here to be angry with, there’s no point to the indignation burning like embers in his chest.

He can save his anger for when she comes back.

For now, he funnels all of his focus and energy on the rebellion, on saving the districts, on getting her back. It’s everything, it’s too much, it’s all of him and it isn’t enough. There’s an unspoken hierarchy of rebels and victors and he’s nowhere near the top of it.

So he works and plans and does his best to end this mess sooner rather than later. Over and over again, he comes up with strategies and angles and ways to get the public on their side.

_You have an important role to play_ , Coin had told him when he first showed up at Thirteen.

_Sure_ , he thinks. _Babysitter_.

It’s a cruel thought, but it’s one he can’t help having. He’s the only adult Katniss seems to even vaguely trust, so more often than not his task for the day is to sit with her and try and… help, or something. He does _want_ to help—the kid’s been through a lot she didn’t deserve and even he can recognize it—he’s just not sure it’s working so well.

Either he’ll say something upsetting and she’ll get angry or they’ll both just sit in silence for hours, moodily avoiding the other’s gaze.

Katniss break the pattern one day, looking straight at him with searching eyes.

“Who are they?” she asks, voice rough from disuse. It’s the first he’s heard her talk in over a day, and he forces himself to breath in and out before responding.

His _Who do you think?_ is still a little too sharp, a little too cutting. None of this is the girl’s fault, and pissing her off won’t do him any good.

Her eyes widen as she stares at him, at the damning blue _it wasn’t enough_ poking out from under his hat. He tugs the edge down futilely, and glares firmly at a grey stretch of floor.

“I forgot to put her on the list.”

Haymitch sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

She just stares at him, eyes as grey as her father’s, and his father’s, and every kid who’d ever clawed their way through coal dust.

“Do you think Peeta’s my soulmate?” she asks after a long moment.

Haymitch did not spend his life expecting to give teenagers romantic advice, and yet here he is. Again. “You’re his. Everything after that is a choice.” He drums his fingers against the table between them and wishes viciously for a drink. “That’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?” Is he saying or asking? He can’t quite tell. “People. Choices.”

“I’m not sure anymore,” Katniss says, voice hoarse.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me either.”

*

It takes too long, but they find her. They save her.

_Save_ seems a strong fucking word, though.

They put Effie under on the flight back from the prison they’d found her in, so the first time he sees her in months she’s unconscious. She’s bruised beyond belief, to the point where he can barely read some of his Thoughts on her. There’s a ring of yellowing splotches around her neck, a line of still-open scratches across her shoulders, and a sickening bend in her lower leg.

All of it makes Haymitch want to put his fist through a wall and never let her out of his sight again.

He doesn’t actually do either thing, but he gets pretty close.

Johanna, of all people, is the one who stops him from busting his hand on two-feet thick concrete, but it’s Katniss that shoves him into the chair by Effie’s post-op beside.

He’s sitting at her bedside, holding her hand in his, when she wakes up.

“Haymitch?” she asks, voice thready.

“Hey sweetheart.” He consciously stops himself from squeezing too tight—her hand feels weak and breakable and he doesn’t want to risk hurting her.

Her eyes go in and out of focus as she looks around the white, sterile room. “Where—where am I?”

“District Thirteen,” he says. “The rebellion.”

“Oh,” she whispers.

There is little of the brilliant, combative Effie Trinket in her right now. He feels a flaming wave of hatred rise in him for the people who did this to her. For the Capital, who turned against their best without hesitation. For himself, who let them take her.

Still. He knows better than anyone not to count her out for long.

Haymitch strokes a thumb across his own _wake up_ scrawled across her knuckles and tries to clear his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, more accusing and whining than he’d wanted.

Effie rolls her head across her pillow to look at the plastic curtain separating them from the endless beds of Thirteen’s medical facilities.

“Haymitch—”

“Years, Effie. You’ve known for years and you didn’t _say anything_?” Nothing, even after all those times where he had her cover up her own Thoughts.

He stiffens when she pulls her hand away from him, turning it to look at the letters on her knuckles, and smiling sadly to herself. “ _Piece of shit nuisance soulmate can’t keep their thoughts to themselves_ ,” she says, and the world falls out from under him.

Trust him to say the worst possible thing to the worst possible person.

“Sweetheart, I—”

“Why didn’t I tell you we were soulmates?” she asks, looking up at him. “Why didn’t _you_ tell me about the rebellion?” She sighs and twists her fingers together.  “I’m sorry, Haymitch. But you always said not to ask questions you didn’t want the answers to.”

He swallows thickly. “I’m starting to think it’s better to know.”

“Maybe,” she says, but she puts her hand back in his and doesn’t let go.

*

By the time he’s turned 43, Haymitch Abernathy has decided that this whole soulmate business is only mostly bullshit. Plenty of people live long, happy lives without ever finding their soulmate, but that doesn’t include him anymore.

He’s had a longer life than many, and shittier one than most, but the chance to look at Effie in his living room, reading a magazine with the sunlight through the window haloing her blonde hair might make it worth it. He likes to think that he and Effie would’ve found each other without their Thoughts, without the whole fate thing—he hopes he won’t have been so far up his own ass that he would’ve let her pass by.

It isn’t easy, not when they’re so stuck in patterns of distrust and bitterness. It’s a choice, every day, for both of them. A choice to wake up and trust someone else with every fragile part of themselves, even if they risk being broken. Sometimes one of them can’t make that choice, sometimes they both do and it’s still not enough.

It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Boy that Haymitch sure is bad at being explicitly nice to people! What a kidder
> 
> I'm over [here](https://glass-es-say.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi!


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